On Movies

I have been waiting for this movie to be in stock at the video store for sometime now. It was finally in the other day, so I finally watched it. It has been a long time since I've been so disturbed by a movie. It ended, and I literally sat there staring at the screen for like ten minutes. It's a good movie, really good, but oh so disturbing.

I think it is hard to approach the Holocaust in a way that hasn't been done before, but this movie did a great job of that. Now I don't know how plausible the scenario actually is, but I thought the movie did an amazing job of showing the experience through a child's eyes. The kid in the movie Asa Butterfield, is an amazing little actor. When I was watching it I was trying to think back to my 8 year old self and was wondering whether I would have understood the situation. I'm not sure. To Bruno, the main character in the movie, the whole idea of the concentration camp is that it is like a big game. He's jealous of his friend Schmoll (on the other side of the fence), because he gets to play with other kids on the "farm". Bruno never quite comprehends. The whole thing is so innocent, and I guess it really shouldn't be any other way.

God...it is so hard to comprehend what was done to these people: I mean, they were not seen as human! I just, I can't fully get it. The mother in the movie, she eventually finds out what is going on and while it is clear she doesn't believe in it, she never does anything to stop it. She worries and frets over her own children's safety, yet in her own backyard is a place where other people's children, other people, are suffering, are dying, and somehow she draws a line.

The end of the movie is so tragic, so disturbing, yet there is a little part of me that was kind of like, see, that's what you get Nazi father! Brunos father is the soldier in charge of the concentration camp, and he backs his country fully; he thinks nothing of gassing rooms full of Jewish people on a daily basis if that is what the Fuhrer wants. Yet when it hits home, when someone close to him is affected, it suddenly becomes clear. I just don't know why it took such a horrible occurrence for him to realize that what he is doing, what his country is doing, isn't right.

Anyway, it was a good movie. I'm going to keep flashing back to it for a while now though, especially the last scene in the gas chamber. When I went to Poland a couple months ago, I stood in one of those very gas chambers. I honestly cannot even put into words how that makes me feel.